Far Out Adventures: Episode II
After the events of Episode I, the crew members of the sentient elevator called Ellie were left to decide what to do with their new-found wealth. Ellie and Chomps discussed high-level mathematics as the others discussed where to set their course. A purple light on Ellie's dashboard began to flash. After a moment, Ellie informed the rest that this was a distress signal from somewhere in space. Vynn was extremely skeptical about responding to the distress signal, saying, “We have 20,000 credits, let's get wasted.” Ellie ignored this and took it upon herself to shoot heavenward. Her ascent was arrested suddenly as she was snagged by a tow beam that compelled her to stop at a toll booth. Ellie opened a line of communication with the toll both and Vynn took control of the situation. “Looks like you're trying to get out pretty fast,” the toll agent smirked. “You don't have clearance. Don't want to cause a crash, now do we?” Vynn's eyes narrowed and he took on a look of official business. “Kindly release my vessel.” “Afraid I can't do that.” “I am working undercover. Kindly. Release. My. Vessel. Alternatively, I could report you for soliciting a bribe from an Imperial Agent.” Without further discussion, the field holding Ellie back melted away and she again shot toward orbit. Vynn sauntered over to the bar and poured himself a celebratory Pangalactic Gargleblaster. Wbleep! The purple light on the dash flicked on and off again. Ellie commented, “This distress signal is coming from a small, abandoned asteroid mine, ZetaPhi228463-0089347298333.” Vynn, still believing himself in charge, lifted his glass. “Ellie, press forward into adventure!”  As Ellie descended toward the asteroid surface, something collided loudly with the side of the elevator, causing the doors to fly open. Chomps and Estela tumbled out. Vynn and Kirby were able to cling to Ellie as she crashed into the rocky surface. The grey atmosphere, clouded with dusty air, limited the survivors' ability to see more than about five feet in front of them.   Chomps managed to stand up on his enormous hind legs, nose to the air, trying to sniff out his friends. He was rewarded with a nose full of dust. Frustration momentarily overcame his programming and he headbutted a rock. It cracked. Chomps felt very satisfied and let out a delighted roar. Elsewhere on the rock, Ellie, Vynn, and Kirby all heard the roar.   After she fell from the elevator, Estela managed to land in a pile of dust. This would have been fortunate, save that the dust was so fine it immediately collapsed beneath her, pulling her further and further down. She immediately spread herself out to slow herself down and began looking for something to pull herself out with. Some nearby metal objects caught her eye and she made a desperate grab for them.   After determining that Ellie was alright and fit to fly, Kirby and Vynn began backtracking to see if they could find their lost crewmates. Unfortunately, they flew over Chomps' head. His keen senses enabled him to give chase, and as Ellie came to a halt, he approached.   Having saved herself from the sinking sand, Estela found that the object she had grabbed onto was part of a door. She managed to open it and was greeted with a blast of warm, humid air. This seemed better than the wasteland, so she entered.   Ellie's sensors picked up the source of the distress signal and was able to put down right near an antenna poking up from the ground like a spine. Her AI hologram went to investigate, finding itself 'walking' on over two feet of dust. Vynn, nonplussed, pulled out his pack of smokes and his new gun. The gun had been designed as a tracking device and now told him that an entrance had been detected. Vynn swirled around, scanning what he could. “There's a space beneath us,” he told the rest. “A hollow...” he fired the gun into the ground. It did little but disturb the dust. Fortunately, the dust that had been displaced revealed a hatch. Chomps wrapped his muscular tail around the handle and was able to lift it open.   Estela, meanwhile, found herself in a long corridor. It took only a moment for her cat eyes to adjust to the darkness. There weren't any discernible noises save for some dripping and something else that sounded suspiciously like an exhalation. She took a tentative step forward and her foot found something viscous on the ground. She reached down to feel around, unable to smell anything particular. Whatever she'd stepped in was undoubtedly slimy, and, upon tasting it, she found it bitter. Estela immediately regretted tasting it. She reached up into her hat to retrieve a small vial to save some of this substance in. When she got back to Ellie, she could, perhaps test it. Then, her cat-like wariness getting the better of her, she sprang onto the wall and climbed toward the ceiling to continue down the corridor.   The larger group stepped through the hatch to discover a large room with a gargantuan structure in the center of it. The smells in here were composed mostly of old death and contaminated dust. Kirby went to the doors on the perimeter of the room and tried to open them, but they didn't seem to be powered. As they all approached the device, they could see a large organism sitting in it. Vynn tried to greet it, but received no response. He climbed up toward the head, but coughed slightly, which disturbed the layer of dust over the creature, revealing a large hole in its chest. Those on the floor looking up could see the organism's spine directly overhead. “It seems this creature is fixed into this machine. Nothing up here but dust,” Vynn relayed.   “Well what do we do?”   “Let's try to pull it out.”   Chomps agreed, and allowed himself to grow to his full height. This was a sizable feat and had only been discussed before by the members of this crew. To see it in action was quite impressive. Chomps approached the device and the creature, ripping the latter out of the machine and laying it as politely as possible on the ground at Kirby's feet. Vynn immediately sprang up into the contraption's chair.   Estela came to the end of the corridor and found a door with a panel. Upon touching it, she found it slimy, but responsive. The door slid open and the room on the other side flooded with blue light. At a nearby console, a gyroscope began to spin, and a screen with lit-up buttons appeared in the darkened flat surface. Estela reached out to touch it and three options appeared, in a language she didn't understand. She pressed the first option on the left, the door closed behind her, and the lights about her moved to red. A bar with urgent-looking writing popped up. Estela jabbed at the far right option and everything powered down. She was left in darkness.   At that same moment, Ellie realized that the beacon had stopped transmitting a distress signal. Vynn had been using the height of the contraption's chair to try to reach a nearby vent, which seemed to be the only possible way out of the room. He managed to shoot it out and miraculously climbed into the dark hole. “I'll be right back,” he promised. Ellie's AI joined him.   The floor began to rumble beneath their feet and began to cave in. Chomps didn't move quickly enough to avoid being pulled down, but Kirby was able to make it to the frame of one of the doors and stand on the sill, escaping whatever fate befell the dinosaur.   In the vents, Ellie took a turn and fell through a weak spot in the ceiling into a large room. There were many consoles and appeared to be a laboratory. “Look at the glass phials,” Vynn mused. Ellie attempted to find some source of light. With his emergency light, Vynn continued to explore the lab, but found only something that could have been a morgue. There were six or seven bodies of all different species laid out on slabs. Shuddering, he turned his back on the group and climbed up on a console to try to reach the vents again. Vynn's thumb accidentally hit against a switch on his belt and his jet pack caused him to hover up to to the vent, enabling him to climb inside with ease. Why didn't I think of this earlier?  Chomps shook himself off, finding himself in a pit. It didn't seem to be an enclosed space, rather another level. From her perch on the sill, Kirby called down to him to make sure he was alright. She reached around the door, fingers searching for a panel. This time it responded to her touch and lights in the room came on after a hum and a click. The door also slid open behind her and she turned to make her own way down the hall.   Chomps heard a screeching sound from around his feet and looked down to sniff and observe a snake-like creature. It appeared to have just died, so he ate it. His throat burned all the way down with an unpleasant acidic aftertaste. Mustn't do that again, he thought. Chomps was now able to observe the ground and found it to be covered with a sticky, viscous liquid. He moved toward a nearby door (the same one over which Kirby stood) and decided to ram it down. Upon doing this, he discovered a large expanse of liquid. He'd stumbled upon a flooded hangar.   Finally, Vynn and Ellie met up with Kirby and exchanged stories, finishing with the floor caving in but Chomps being okay and making a huge ruckus on the level below. The three decided to press on and came into a new laboratory. “I'm ready to leave,” Vynn groaned and shot out three dusty tubes. In response, something slurped out of the tube and came shrieking across the room toward Kirby. She immediately put her hands up to defend herself and was able to stop the creature from attaching itself to her face. She flung it into a wall where it exploded into a rain of acid that burned the surrounding walls and floor.   “Vynn, what the fuck!” Kirby yelled.   Down below in the flooded hangar, Chomps had discovered two ships that looked like they had been crafted using old world technology. This was a very good find.   Not seeming to care about the damage he nearly caused, Vynn pounded on some consoles until they awoke. He was able to get the gist of the strange letters that appeared. “It says “System Malfunction,” he reported. “Speciman... something... escaped.” He jabbed a finger at the flashing red light. “This one says Security Protocol, I think.” He pressed it.   A voice overhead called out to join it for protection, to join in the main room.   Chomps heard the voice of “Protectron,” but didn't know what to do with the information.   Thankfully, security lights along the edges of the floor led the group to the 'main room.' They skidded to a stop on the edge of the room, spying the large machine that suddenly aggressively grabbed at Ellie. Vynn whipped out his gun in an instant and fired at the machine, Protectron. Protectron swiped at Vynn, catching him with enough force to bruise and stun him. Ellie attempted to distract the machine but wasn't able to. Vynn raised his gun again only to be rebuffed and further injured.   Chomps found a smaller room nearby with a panel that glowed faintly. He poked it with his nose and the panel lit up in response. The prompts it gave him meant nothing, so he poked it again. This proved to be an error, as the ceiling began to lower and the walls began to cave in.   Under Protectron, the floor began to cave in. Kirby and Ellie dragged Vynn along until they were clear of the danger. Protectron was not so lucky and it fell to the level below, shattering.   “Chomps!” Ellie caught a glimpse of the dinosaur. “Stay where you are, we're coming down!"  As Ellie, Kirby, and Vynn began to slide down toward Chomps, they realized they had not yet caught up with Estela. “We're short one,” Ellie observed aloud. Chomps roared as everyone clapped hands over ears.   “I wish I could whisper,” he offered as way of apology, “but I'm a dinosaur and I can't control my volume.”  Vynn tried next, his rock star vocals shaking the walls. Kirby rolled her eyes, still pissed about the near-death experience he'd caused. “Unnecessary!”  Suddenly there was a scream from the door nearest to Chomps. “It's coming from the hangar!”  Everyone arrived in the hangar and saw the two ships and the flooded area. Upon closer inspection, the flooded area was actually a bluish laser cloud. After looking around, Vynn said, “I think the scream came from down there!” Rash as ever, he dove into the mist. About three feet into the cloud he broke through a barrier and emerged on the other side, where he fell from ceiling height to the floor below. Upon sitting up, he took stock of his surroundings and discovered, much to his horror, about one hundred large eggs. Further adding to the alienscape were seeming cocoons adorning the walls that could have once been sentient beings. He saw humanoid arms, feet, hands, all protruding from the cocoons. Ellie appeared next to him, hovering gently above the eggs. “This is horrific!” she cried. “We should leave!”   “No, wait!” Vynn pointed. Estela hung motionless in a cocoon very close to them. Vynn carefully stepped over several eggs to cut her down. She flopped over onto him. The man hanging next to her groaned. Ellie summoned her elevator form and Vynn carefully carried the pair into the infirmary. He stepped aboard Ellie as well.   Up above, Kirby was inspecting the old ships. If they were still spaceworthy, they could fetch a fair amount of money, give her a place to exist that was not inside an infernal elevator with an egotistical asshole like Vynn. The right-hand ship clearly had a large hole punched into the side. It would never do. The left-hand ship, however, showed promise. Kirby climbed up inside to the control panel and was pleased to see she could read most of the symbols. She was able to start the dusty engines and issued a command to prepare for liftoff.   While all this was happening, inside Ellie, Vynn wrote a note to the sleeping man in Common to explain the situation. Before he could finish writing, the man stirred, half a scream dying on his lips as he realized he was safe. Vynn had to break the news to him that his crew was dead. The man reeled and looked as though he would be ill. Chomps climbed aboard Ellie as she rose back through the mist, and sniffed the man. “What do they call you?” Vynn asked.   “Drazo Zallus,” the man lay down again in the infirmary bed.   Ellie observed Kirby's delight with the new ship and felt a spark of what she labeled 'jealousy.' “I'm the only ship you'll ever need!” the loudspeakers sounded. Kirby looked around just in time to see Ellie careening toward her prize.   “ELLIE, NO!” Kirby gasped as the elevator rammed into the ship.   “Come back, Kerbarose!”   Five separate systems flashed up red and blue alerts on Kirby's overhead display. “Shield up!” she commanded. The shields responded, but only briefly. “Fuck!”   Ellie rammed the ship again as more alarms sounded in the cockpit. This time the ship tipped, throwing its already-damaged neighbor ship into the wall. The wall, rusting under countless eons of moisture and slime, gave way. Screeching noises and the sound of spidery leg bones on the floors came across the external sound pick-ups on both vessels. “What the hell is that?” Kirby looked toward the walls and floors.   More alarms sounded in her cockpit and Kirby knew the ship was done for. Cursing Ellie with every breath, she slid down the ladder, only to hear the shrieking sounds more clearly. Ellie was hovering across the room, and as Kirby began to move toward her, the spidery creatures came pouring from the hole in the wall. “Oh fuck!” Kirby began to run toward Ellie and leapt the last few feet just as one of the critters lashed out at her feet.   “Fuck you, Ellie!” Kirby aimed a kick at the nearest console. Vynn grabbed her arms as she flung herself into a seat for Ellie's breach of the asteroid's atmosphere.   “Look, Kirby,” Vynn spoke soothingly. “We need you, and you need us.”   “The hell I do!” she hissed. “I could have finally had a place to conduct my affairs. Some place that would not have cost every last dengue I have in my possession. Do you even fucking know what it is to be a Companion without a ship?”   Vynn shook his head, “I don't know, I don't, okay, but we belong together, all of us here.”   Kirby's fury was suddenly overcome by her training. “You know what, Vynn, you're right,” she said, perfectly calm. He smiled, glad to have won her over.   “Good!” he said cheerfully. “Now, make me drinks until I pass out.”   She smiled charmingly, stood up, and went to the bar.   A rustling from the infirmary caused everyone to gather at the door. Estela sat up. “Whoa...” END